UIM/P Nimbus has been released as UIM/P v. 4.0 on the 15th of August 2013. I was waiting for the official announcement and the release code on the Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning page on support.emc.com but, as it turned out, version 4.0 will have its own support page: https://support.emc.com/products/28497_Unified-Infrastructure-Manager
The review of new features can be found on this blog post: EMC UIM/P (Nimbus) review
New features and changes
Support for FAST VP Storage
UIM/P provides support for the discovery and display of the Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) feature available on the Symmetrix VMAX series and EMC VNX series platforms.
FAST VP Policies are discovered at the same time as Converged Hardware System discovery. When made available, you can assign FAST VP Policies (instead of grades) to block storage when creating service offerings and services.
Support for Shared Storage
UIM/P provides support for shared storage. You can now share datastores across multiple services.
UIM/P services prior to UIM/P 4.0 are now referred to as standard services. A shared storage service is a service that contains LUNs that are shared across multiple standard services. Using UIM/P you can attach multiple standard services to a shared storage service.
Storage Group Selector
For non-shared VMAX storage, if there is more than one storage group available on the array when adding storage to a standard service, UIM/P will allow you to select which storage group to use.
If multiple storage groups are available for new storage resources in your standard service, the ‘Storage Group’ field appears when you use the Service Manager and add block storage.
Support for VPLEX
UIM/P services prior to UIM/P 4.0 are now referred to as standard services.
Introduced in UIM/P 4.0, the new VPLEX service is a service that allows management of virtual volumes shared across stretched clusters. The stretch clusters are represented by two standard services attached to the VPLEX service; where the standard services are in different sites (Converged Hardware Systems).
OS Install Agent
UIM/P now allows you to fully manage and provision remote Converged Hardware Systems.
Due to latency issues, local OS Install Agents may sometimes not allow operating system installations over WAN. To support VPLEX, and to provision Converged Hardware Systems to install operating systems over WAN, UIM/P can now interface with instances of remote OS Install Agents in addition to local ones.
To enter information for a remote OS Install Agent and associate it with a Converged Hardware System, log into the UIM/P console and go to the Administration, Infrastructure Assets, OS Install Agents tab.
Enhancements and changes to the ICA utility
As for previous releases, the standalone UIM/P Infrastructure Configuration Analyzer (ICA) utility can be run from the command line, using credentials entered in an XML file. In this release, the standalone ICA utility has been enhanced to also determine VSPEX and VPLEX, and to run the relevant tests as appropriate for the given components. In addition to running on VMs, the standalone ICA utility can now also be run on Windows.
For more information, refer to EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning Configuration Requirements for Converged Hardware Systems.
Support for DNS, NTP, and SSH settings
UIM/P allows you to perform additional ESX configuration, which will help you reduce manual post-provisioning steps. You can use UIM/P to configure IP addresses for DNS servers, IP address for NTP servers, and to enable SSH to the ESX/ESXi operating systems. The DNS, NTP, and SSH settings will be applied to all the servers in a standard service, when the standard service is provisioned.
To configure the DNS, NTP, and SSH settings, use the UI console, access the Service Manager, edit a standard service, and go to the Server tab.
Enhancements and changes to automatic compliance checking
Compliance checking verifies that the provisioning performed by UIM/P matches what is on the equipment.
Starting with this release of UIM/P, automatic compliance checking on standard services is switched off by default.
To enable automatic compliance checking for a standard service: use the Service Manager to edit the standard service; on the General tab, check the Auto Compliance checkbox. However, if you enable automatic compliance checking for a standard service after it has been provisioned, you will need to run a compliance check to regenerate the tests for OOB changes to be captured.
You can run a compliance check on a standard service, at any time, by using the Service Manager to select the standard service, then clicking the Verify Compliance button.
NUMEROUS enhancements and changes to the UIM/P console
UIM/P 4.0 documentation and Downloads
- Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning 4.0 Release Notes
- Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning 4.0 Documentation Portfolio:
- Revision History and Audience.pdf
- Support Matrix.pdf
- Configuration Requirements for Converged Hardware Systems.pdf
- Software Installation and Configuration.pdf
- Online Help (Administration and User Guide).pdf
- API Programmers Guide.pdf
- Troubleshooting Guide.pdf
- Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning 4.0 Security Configuration Guide
- UIM/P 4.0 Virtual Appliance – Full Release – 2,508.8 MB
- UIM/P 4.0 – Update Media – 848.0 MB
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